Art is a primary problem-solving, communicative tactic. Each of us as artists and audience members has a responsibility to solve individual problems in the studio and tackle societal problems outside the studio.People are accumulations of genetic information. Layers and stacks of information and experience shape us. We are unique collages of nature and nurture.

In the early 2000s I made works formed, stacked and layered using the visual system of International Morse Code. The dots and dashes form the message but the message is incoherent without the spaces between the dots and dashes. This suggests, if we extend that way of thinking, that the human worlds coherence is dashed without the context of the non-human world. Similarly, numerical* majorities (whites) loose their definition without the inclusion of non-whites. One cannot tell the A, B and C apart if there is no space between. Therefore the majority and minority must be equal if they require each other for definition.**

The new work is made from accumulated, stacked, layered and collaged forms. As pieces are compared to each other or as comparisons are made within each piece one sees various levels of finish. I am very interested in conversations about what is a correct level of finish in each work and the body of work as a whole. Levels of finish suggest either an adherence to what other people think should happen or what I think should happen. It boils down to these questions: What is Better? Whos It Better To? and Who Are You to Decide?

I am using adhesive tapes, tape on paper, other tape. I build up layers and stacks of material. It has been a fundamental occupation of mine for as long as I can remember. I am re-inventing new forms that descend from dry-stone walls and baseball card towers I built as a kid in our rural home. Finally I think of my grandmothers rag rugs and quilts fashioned from scraps of old cloth. They wouldnt have called themselves artists but they did what artists do: transforming material and experience into new identities.

Garry NolandSeptember 2, 2011

*one might as well include numerically minority populations that control the means of production, saving, spending, loaning and investing.

2009:These works refer to two themes. Initially I think of my grandmothers' quilts and rugs made from scraps of used cloth. They wouldn't have called themselves artists but they did what artists do: transforming material and experience into new identities.Secondly I think of something Galway Kinnell wrote: the only human context is the non-human world. We can, he said, learn about ourselves by learning about the non-human part of nature.Our most basic human attitudes mimic the globe we live one. The continents, becauseWE are on them, are seen as positive. The seas become "not positive" or negative. The waters erode the land while the land pushes back the water; resulting in a continuously changing drawing. Each requires the other for definition. The positive/negative inter-relationship could be our primer for us/them arguments. People require a "them" to define the "us". Similarly, the alphabet requires space between the letters. Therefore both are equal. This should negate the good/evil stance individuals and cultures make when comparing each other.The small leap, then, is to conclude that the continents we ride on and the water around us are like letters. We assign and derive meaning from and to both. The globe is a text.Regarding the Slope Failure Drawings:Slope Failure refers, geologically, to the downward movement of soil and debris in response to gravity. In a gentle slope, this movement occurs gradually, almost imperceptibly. It is more like a gradual avalanche.Slope failures transform a landscape's appearance by displacing soil from one place to another, simultaneously revealing previously unseen surfaces. Metaphorically, this is what artists do, and perhaps, what Jackson Pollack meant when he claimed, "I am nature".Three typical examples of slope failure are in Penn Valley Park, Kansas City, Missouri. These drawings were taken from one of these features, just west of Penn Valley Park Lake. Their wave-like forms speak to gravity's pull on the material.The subtractive/additive nature of erosion and sedimentation informs my sculptural work too. Layers of National Geographic magazines (layers of content in themselves) are stacked up, mimicking, for instance, the kind of record-keeping one sees in sedimentary pages of limestone.Pattern too is important in the work. While there are abundant "random patterns" in nature, much less random are patterns of process in natures. The rhythms of daily/seasonal change, tidal flow and migrations are examples of patterns that make chance possible. Pattern describes process.